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I lived in Beverley throughout the war with my parents in one of the very old houses in Highgate. My father built us an air raid shelter in our back garden, it was snug and dry and we felt safe there inside its reinforced concrete walls and roof. When food rationing began early in 1940, my job was issuing ration books for the local authority; later the Ministry of Food took us over and our pay improved. For a couple of years our office was in the beautiful, but cold Chinese drawing room in Admiral Walker House; when I walked down the grand staircase under the glass dome I used to feel like a society lady. There were about fifteen of us who were involved in organising ration books and identity cards for the 30,000 people of the district. Everyone filled in a form, rather like the census, stating who lived in each house, and all their details.
These forms came to our office, and people then came to us to collect their ration books. We went in taxis to the villages where schoolrooms or village halls were turned into temporary offices for us so that people did not have to come in to Beverley. There was no staff training; we just worked from our office 'bible' which consisted of all the rules and regulations sent out by the ministry. However, the system was well thought out and catered for special diets like diabetics, and babies, children and expectant mothers.
As well as seeing that the public received their fair share of the goods in the shops we had to ensure that the shopkeepers were able to replenish their shelves. The tiny coupons which were cut from the ration books were sent to us and we counted every one, and issued the shopkeeper with a voucher to take to the wholesaler for fresh supplies. Every Monday we issued permits to the butchers so that they could buy their meat from the government slaughter house down Wood Lane. Pre-war the butchers had done their own slaughtering behind their shops, but now, except a few for private individuals who kept a pig, every bit of meat had to be accounted for.
If you could afford to go to a café or restaurant you did not need to use food coupons for these meals. Hotels and cafes stated the number of meals they served and were issued with food vouchers accordingly, but I remember one small boarding house that claimed to have more guests than the large hotels, so an inspector kept watch, found discrepancies, and the proprietor was prosecuted.
Later the office moved to a large house at 6 Newbegin, where we had to take it in turns to sleep on camp beds to ‘fire watch’ in case any incendiary bombs fell on the house - the fire brigade taught us how to put these out. Fortunately, Beverley suffered very little bomb damage, I only remember one occasion, when I was in the Regal cinema on Bank Holiday Monday afternoon, watching ‘Rose Marie’, when I came out there had been an air-raid and sadly three people were killed in Flemingate. But my father had a close encounter with a German plane, he worked at RAF Leconfield throughout the war looking after the runways, and had an orange bike with FOT on it — Foreman of Trades, but the men used to say it stood for Flying Officer Teal! One morning father and his men went to check a runway at the Arram side and took the train from Beverley, as it was quicker, but as soon as they got off the train they were strafed by machinegun fire from the plane and dived for cover. Thankfully, they were all safe.
Beverley was much safer than Hull which we could not only see but smell as the city burned after being bombed; we were very sad for the people of Hull.

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